The next morning I got up and flipped a few of the various boards laying around the cabin and found several centipedes but no herps. As everyone got up, we decided to take a walk to the nearby ghost town. We encountered these on that walk:
Me, Iwalani & Jeremy
Plateau Fence lizard
Bison
Nikki at the ghost town
Me at the ghost town
Prairie Ringneck found under some vinyl siding - Jeremy & Iwalani's first sought after snake!
The Mora River
As we were flipping in the ghost town I saw some movement and a canine shape running toward us. My first thought was "coyote," then I saw that it was two dogs. There is one man who still lives in the area. His name is Ben and they are his dogs. Here is a picture of one of them getting a drink:
Plateau Fence Lizard
On the way back to the Cabin, Iwalani carried the ringneck and fell in love with it. This is the girl who screamed and ran when I brought out my rosy boa one night at my apartment a few years ago. She had named it by the time we got back to the cabin. The name escapes me right now. One non-herper converted! :thumb: :beer: <-- that's root beer because I don't drink ;)
We returned to the cabin and made some breakfast burritos and napped a little before heading out again. We decided to go to some ponds where we saw a lot of bullfrogs the last time we were here. We spotted this frog along the river on the way to the pond:
I looked around the pond and Jeremy and Iwalani walked around a little bit and then I heard my wife calling and she had found this:
Eastern Snapping Turtle
We also saw several bullfrogs. We decided to head back to the cabin. Jeremy and Iwalani had to head back home, so we needed to get some things packed and such. Iwalani wasn't feeling well, so we were helping her when Logan came inside the cabin and asked his mom for the camera because there was a rattlesnake outside! There is only one species of rattlesnake known in the area, so I was pretty sure what was out there. I dropped what I was doing and ran outside to find this:
Prairie Rattlesnake - I was right!
Scott, Rebecca, me, Brian & Ted with the camera in the back there
Logan, Scott, Rebecca, me & Dave
me stopping Logan from getting envenomated.
We said bye to Jeremy and Iwalani and they went home and bought hiking boots so that could go herping with us again!
We went for a road cruise that night and found a few things out:
Woodhouse Toad
We also found a couple DOR's:
Lined Snake
Plains Garter Snake
And also this live snake:
An attractive bullsnake
After cruising we returned to the cabin and got some sleep. The next morning we arose and checked a spot we found last spring that had turned up some things. Dell went with us. On our way there we found Pat hanging out on the bridge near the ghost town. This is what he was looking at:
Eastern Snapping Turtle
We continued on our way and these are some of the things we found:
juvie Short-horned Lizard that Nikki spotted
Plains Garter that I flipped
Dell flipped a couple ringnecks
I saw this railroad tie and told Dell that I had flipped it on two occasions on the last trip and found the same Great Plains Skink. I flipped it and found:
The same skink! I guess it likes that railroad tie!
Another Plains Garter
We stopped at the pond again because Dell had not been there yet:
Eastern Snapping Turtle
some bullfrogs with the turtle
We got back to the cabin and some others had hiked along the river and found some of these:
Northern Leopard Frog - sorry for the crappy pic, it's the only one I got.
Dell and I decided to try to find our own leopards and walked out to the river and found no frogs, but did find this:
Wandering Garter Snakes - it is interesting, we found tons of these guys in the spring, in fact it was the only species of garter found on the spring trip. In July, Charlie Painter was out there and they found some blackneck garters, plains and wandering. We only found plains and wandering this trip.
We went back to the cabin and had dinner and then went road cruising. We went with Ted and Dell. The others were going to catch bullfrogs at the pond. We had a pretty productive cruise:
Plains
Wandering
We saw a DOR and stopped to check it out. Ted pulled up to it and Dell rolled down the window and said, "coontail." sure enough it was this juvie:
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake - RANGE EXTENSION! They have been found in the county, but not within miles of where we were. The carcass was collected and will be vouchered at the museum.
The rest of the cruise produced several DOR bullsnakes.
We returned to the cabin and found Scott outside and we told him what we found and he told a us a story. Apparently, one of the group had gone missing and they had searched everywhere for her and could not find her. They eventually got a hold of her on her phone and she was walking back to Albuquerque. She was upset with her husband and decided to go home. They convinced her to come back and they left early the next morning.
The final day didn't involve much herping, but mainly packing up, cleaning and a photo session of various things found on the trip and then a mass releasing:
Wandering Garter
Prairie Ringneck
Bullsnake
juvie Plains Garter
Plains Garter
All in all it was a good trip! Several county records for the database and even a range extension!
Josh
Great photos and narrative ... makes me miss the Springtime, when I spent 3 weeks herping Eddy County. My favorite thing about this post was that, for whatever reason, it shows how much respect and admiration someone like yourself has for the natural world. Maybe its that I just came from a rattlesnake removal call (I live in Phoenix) that ended with the home owner killing it before I arrived, but the contrast in our society is so nice to see. As Bill Hicks said, it's a choice between fear and love, and which will rule your life.
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